


Alone in the Darkness, But Never Alone

by Morgelyn



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Darkness, Hallucinations, Humiliation, M/M, Madness, Psychological Torture, Sensory Deprivation, Stockholm Syndrome, Thramsay - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23109826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgelyn/pseuds/Morgelyn
Summary: Theon is cast into the darkness and Reek is lifted out.
Relationships: Ramsay Bolton/Reek, Ramsay Bolton/Theon Greyjoy, Ramsay Bolton/Theon Greyjoy/Reek
Comments: 14
Kudos: 44





	Alone in the Darkness, But Never Alone

Theon had been scared of the dark as a child. He had been ashamed to admit it, even at the time. But it had never been a darkness like this. There had always been a candle, the low glow of the fire in the hearth, and even failing that, the stars and moon to be seen from the window. This darkness into which he had been cast was of an entirely different magnitude. It made no difference whether his eyes were open or closed – it was all the same. There was only the darkness.

Pitch black. The phrase was inadequate for this darkness. Pitch had a gleam to it; although no light could penetrate, it could reflect off its surface. This darkness was solid, opaque, impenetrable. It had no surface. And somehow he was caught within it, surrounded by it for an infinite distance in all directions.

He ran his mangled hands over the rough stonework of the walls, obsessed with matching what his fingers could feel with the visual image he knew - in the abstract, at least. But he simply could not make the connection. The walls he could conjure in his mind were grey and rough, pitted with imperfections in the stone and their surfaces lined with tiny scars from their carving. How could this correspond with what his fingers felt in the darkness? With these valleys and peninsulas bigger than the Fingers, with these rough outcroppings of rock larger than the Iron Islands themselves? He screamed when his hand first found the straight line of mortar between two stone blocks; it felt too straight and went on forever, forever, like the line between life and death. He screamed because he could feel both sides of that line at once and that meant he was trapped between them. Escape into death was an impossible mercy, one not to be granted to him. And he screamed again, this time at the fact that he could not hear himself scream. The darkness consumed sound. It consumed all.

At first he tried to keep track of time, counting the seconds to minutes to hours and, for each hour, pulling out a hank of his greasy hair and knotting it. He was naked, of course, and there was no straw on the floor he could find, so he used what he had. His mind wandered in the dark and he was soon no longer confident that he was counting accurately, but it was something. But then came the moment when he reached out to the pile of knotted hair to comfort himself that only a finite amount of time had passed, that he had not been there forever, and found it gone! He searched and searched, scrabbling blindly and desperately on his hands and knees, but it was nowhere to be found. A sudden panic struck him then, that something must be in here with him to have taken it. But then the reality of the situation came and it was so much worse – nothing was in here with him except the darkness, so it must have been the darkness that had taken it. The darkness brooked no measure of the passing of time, because time could no exist within it. Only it and it alone could exist here.

The first time he had needed to piss, he had found his way to the corner and squatted down like a woman. At least the darkness hid his shame in that, even if only from himself. But by the second time, he stayed lying on the ground in order to feel the warm wetness as it ran over his hips and down his thighs. But even that did not feel real; the sensation was muted somehow, more like a memory of a sensation or even of one only experienced in a dream. He put his hand to the wetness and brought it to his face, tried to inhale the acrid stench in an attempt to ground himself. But it smelt of nothing, it was nothing and nor was he. He thought he cried then, but even that was like an unconvincing illusion, a poorly-made facsimile of something that should have been terrible and real. And having no water, it wasn't long until he stopped pissing altogether.

He did not hallucinate in the darkness, which was what he had most feared. He had thought faces would loom out of the void, faces of those he had wronged or had wronged him. The Starks, his father, his sister, even two young and innocent faces burnt to nothing but empty eye sockets, staring and accusing. But he was not even granted that small mercy - there was not even that horror to alleviate the darkness, not even in his mind. The darkness did not need such gaudy tricks; just it and it alone was worse than he could bear.

He even feared he might see _his_ face, _his_ hands curled into fists or holding their bright knives, that could bring such pain either way. But that didn't happen either – it was simply not necessary. _He_ was not part of the darkness, but he had brought it upon him and so was its master. His master too, now that the darkness was becoming part of him. He understood that now, with frightening clarity. How could he have been stupid enough to have ever thought otherwise? 

Because although he did not hallucinate, he did occasionally feel things brushing against his skin, crawling over him. He tried to convince himself it was only rats or cockroaches, like in the dungeons, but made more terrifying by the fact that he could not see them. But after numerous attempts to catch them or, at least, to feel coarse fur or the smoothness of a carapace, he started to realise that this was worse, far worse. What he felt was the darkness itself, inside him and crawling under his skin. He scratched at himself with broken fingernails, trying to get it out. But no matter how hard he tried, the darkness just burrowed deeper. He barely felt the pain as he dug into himself, and the coppery tang of blood that should have filled the air likewise eluded him.

The darkness was absolute, crushing and oppressive and bearing down upon him with all its unseen, unseeable weight. It was not cold, like the darkness of the cell. Nor was it suffocating, as under the hood. This was true darkness, a darkness beyond experience. It was nothing _but_ darkness; no sensation, no glimpsed things in the shadows to bring terror to a half-broken mind. What he wouldn't have given for those nightmares of the shadows now, as even that would have allowed the possibility of light. Light was not even a memory that could be admitted to this darkness. It was. It was all that could be. He lacked even a self in its omnipresence; it had consumed him, enveloped his body and burrowed in, and had been absorbed with every desperate breath, until it had invaded every part of him and staked its claim. He was of the darkness now and that was more terrible than anything, to be part of this thing, to have nothing with which to defend himself because there was no self to defend. It was no longer him in the darkness, no longer was he a creature suspended within the paradoxical solidity of the void. He was the darkness and the darkness was him, and there was nothing else nor could there ever be. Unless...

No, he couldn't allow himself to even think that, to even consider the possibility of a release. But it nagged at it his mind, like a child's prayer.  _He_ could come and dispel the darkness.  _He_ was its master and could bring the light. But it was a ridiculous notion. Who had put him in this darkness to begin with?  _But then_ , countered his child's mind,  _he who brings the darkness is the only one who can take it away._

He lay still after that. After all, movement was impossible within the darkness and any attempt to do so was only an illusion. He briefly considered that he might die here or that, indeed, he was already dead. It made no difference.

He only moved when a sudden agony burst into him, searing and almost unrecognisable. He curled into a ball and shut his eyes against its burning. But even through his closed eyelids, he was elated to find that he could see something other than the darkness. It was pink. Bolton pink. His master had come for him after all! He knew that if he was able to open his eyes, he would see his master there, resplendent and illuminated like a god. He wished he could do so, but to know it was enough.

He scrabbled forward on his belly, not even getting up on to his hands and knees, and desperately kissed his master's boots when he found them. He could smell the leather, could feel the mud that coated them, wet and gritty against his lips and cheeks. It was real, it was from outside the darkness, and his heart rejoiced. He mumbled incomprehensible gratitudes into them, all pride gone. Pride could remain in the darkness, along with Theon and all the pain he had brought him. Reek's pain that was to come would all belong to his master, be all in honour of and in gratitude to him.

He felt his master crouch down and then his hand in his hair, pulling back his head. He felt the neck of flask being pressed to his lips. He desperately thought how he should react, what litanies his god demanded of him. “Master, Reek is undeserving...” he tried to say, his voice hoarse and barely comprehensible. But his head was pulled back further and the flask tipped, spilling water into his mouth. It was stagnant and a little brackish but it was like nectar, like a magical elixir from his god. And like an elixir, he felt it dispelling the darkness from within him, replacing it with all that was real and living and of the light. He began to cry with gratitude, not even minding when it was all too soon withdrawn from his cracked lips. He could demand nothing; he had been given more than he deserved already.

He felt hands on him then, his master's hands, turning him this way and that. He did not resist. He was rewarded with the sound of his master's voice. “You seem to have scratched your stinking flesh to ribbons, Reek. Don't you know that only I am entitled to mark my property?”

“Reek knows that now, Master. It was...before. Before I understood.” He hoped desperately that his master would believe him.

“You will punished for that later, of course. But it pleases me that you now understand.”

It was like the darkness had been lifted for a second time. He had pleased his master! It was almost more than his heart could bear, the joy of it swelling inside his sunken chest. Even the promise of punishment was not enough to quell it. _Of course_ he had to be punished, he deserved it, but he had somehow still managed to do something right. Tears of joy ran down his gaunt cheeks and he revelled in the fact that he could feel them too, that he could hear his sobs and they too were real. And when he felt his master's arms lifting him out of the darkness, he knew he would do whatever it took, withstand any pain or humiliation, to please him again. Because his master was also the master of the darkness and his pleasure was all that could keep it at bay. His mercy was his only protection against being cast into the darkness again, perhaps this time forever. And although Reek knew his body would be subject to more mutilations and his fragmented mind fractured further, this was preferable to being made a permanent denizen of the darkness, its captive component formless within its amorphous infinity. He would cling to his master, the only protector he had. Now his sole candle, his stars and moon. All that stood between him and the darkness.


End file.
